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Monday, June 7, 2010

Amanuensis Monday - "Dearest Vernelle"

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

S.S. Recruting office

San Antionio Tex.,

March 15, 1941

Dearest Vernelle,

Well Darling how is the measles serving you by now, I hope you are completely well by this time. I mean now Mar. 15, 1941 at 3:30 o'clock and by the way it's Saturday too.

When we got to town last night we didn't even get off the bus therefore I didn't have a chance to send you a telegram like I promised and I can't get off to go to town until they get ready to send us home, and I don't know if it will be early enough tonight for me to send you a telegram but I hope so, because I am afraid that you are beginning to wonder if I am still alive or not. well I am, and very much so, I failed the Physical on acount of weak eyes. I knew it about 11:30 this morning and I wish to got I could let you know about it but I can't do anything about it just now if I expect to get a free ride home.

I'm pretty sure that I will beat this home but I am just waiting so I backed up against the wall on the office porch and began scribbling.

It took us until 9:45 last night to get here and we didn't have to wait over, more than an hour in all.

Well I believe I will sign off and tell you more about it when I see you.

Your loving hubby,

Leon

A couple of things occur to me when I read this letter written from my daddy to my mother not long after they were married. It was two years before I was born and he went, as his brothers, J. D. and Floyd Richards, had before him, to enlist in the military at the beginning of WWII. He was not a highly educated man and there are several errors in the letter in form and spelling - but not many. I was surprised that he spelled some of the more difficult words correctly, such as telegram, Physical, completely. Also, I wondered about his spelling of the word he meant to be "God" - spelling it "got". It seems I have seen that before. Maybe it was a regional use. I have placed images of the letter below.

My grandfather was German born and spoke with a thick accent. When he said God it sounded more like got. Possibly if your family was of German emigrants that could be how he heard the word and therefor spelled it that way too. Just a thought.....

Homsley Reunion, Seymour, Texas

Shiloh Baptist Church in 1736 ~ Camden County, North Carolina

Original Wooden Building ~ Click on Picture to go to Camden County's Homepage.

HOMESLEY CONNECTIONS

Several of my Richards family cousins have a copy of Carrie Homesley Cunningham's book, "Historical Record of the Holmesley Family." My dad gave me his copy before he died. In Len and Greg's post, "Homsley Stories", a reader tells them how Mrs. Cunningham came to his family farm when he was a boy in Arkansas and talked to his father about genealogy and then came back, delivering her printed book by car to different families that had ordered several copies!

You'll find other gems in this wonderful article on Glenn Gabbard's ancestry which is Homesley ~ the same as mine, and Len's and Greg's.﻿